the intersection of life and grace

The Bible reads "HURT" via Adam McLane on flickr

I want to go to Haiti. I believe God wants me, and a whole lot of other people, to go and be his physical presence doing all sorts of tasks.  From the moment I learned of the devastation in Port-au-Prince, I was wrecked.

The people of Haiti lived a largely subsistence-level life before this earthquake took most of their material goods, housing and ability to earn any living. Millions of people were instantly dependent upon the good graces and provision of the rest of the world. As with many previous disasters, like Hurricane Katrina and the Tsumani that hit Sumatra, people poured out emotions, financial assistance, and in many cases, practical help for a long time. I, myself, have participated in a number of relief trips hands-on or as an organizer.

The news coverage of Haiti is mostly ended now. It’s likely we’ll only hear about crimes, corruption, and the occasional update on some milestone of progress. We won’t see the daily ordeal of getting food for a family. We won’t see the danger to vulnerable children and girls that comes from human traffickers. We won’t see the mud and mire that will engulf the nation as the rainy season begins and people continue to live in makeshift ‘shelters’ made of bedsheets, tarps, and debris from fallen buildings.  We definitely won’t see the spiritual revival taking place among Haiti’s people on our evening news.

I have a group of friends who spent a week in Haiti to serve, to raise awareness of the situation on the ground through social media, and to investigate partnerships for serving alongside the local church now and into the future. They went nervous they’d  all want to adopt an orphan, desiring to help however they could, and with sore arms from the copious vaccinations they received in preparation for their short notice adventure.  They served, they observed, and they were wrecked by the experience. Changed forever. I’m so proud of the way they let God use them. I’m so awed at how God used them. I’m wrecked each and every time I read or hear them speak about their experiences.  I’m going to link to some of their blogs, photos, facebook and videos. Go and see.

Adam McLane – photos – blog posts here, here, here, here, here and here

Tim Schmoyer – blog – podcast

Jeremy Zach – blog

Ian Roberson – blog

Lars Rood – blog

Mark Oestreicher – blog

Anne Jackson – blog

Youth Ministry Advance Team: Haiti – facebook

It’s a lot, I know. It’s all worth it. God is calling. I’m wrecked. When? Where? To do? I don’t know yet. But I’m listening. Are you?

The life of St. Patrick, known as the apostle of Ireland, bears no resemblance to the festivities most of us in America associate with the day. As with many holidays, St. Patrick’s day has become a celebration of Irish heritage through traditions that have nothing to do with Patrick himself, and often have little even to do with Ireland. More so, the parades, green beer/rivers/food/clothing are uniquely American.

Patrick was a witness to the Gospel among the people of Ireland – at that time, a people unreached for Christ. Patrick was born in Scotland, the son of Roman nobles. At age 16 he was kidnapped and forced into slavery in Ireland, during which time he grew in his devotion and faith in spite of his circumstances. God used this time of slavery to give Patrick understanding of the native language, the druid religion, and the culture – all of which would become essential to his service to God as a missionary to Ireland later in his life.  Read more about Patrick here and here.

In the prayer of St. Patrick, said to have been composed as he faced fierce opposition from the Druids, shows his dedication to Christ alone, the source of his faith and strength.  This version is a more literal translation from the Irish language:

I bind to myself today
The strong virtue of the Invocation of the Trinity:
I believe the Trinity in the Unity
The Creator of the Universe.

I bind to myself today
The virtue of the Incarnation of Christ with His Baptism,
The virtue of His crucifixion with His burial,
The virtue of His Resurrection with His Ascension,
The virtue of His coming on the Judgement Day.

I bind to myself today
The virtue of the love of seraphim,
In the obedience of angels,
In the hope of resurrection unto reward,
In prayers of Patriarchs,
In predictions of Prophets,
In preaching of Apostles,
In faith of Confessors,
In purity of holy Virgins,
In deeds of righteous men.

I bind to myself today
The power of Heaven,
The light of the sun,
The brightness of the moon,
The splendour of fire,
The flashing of lightning,
The swiftness of wind,
The depth of sea,
The stability of earth,
The compactness of rocks.

I bind to myself today
God’s Power to guide me,
God’s Might to uphold me,
God’s Wisdom to teach me,
God’s Eye to watch over me,
God’s Ear to hear me,
God’s Word to give me speech,
God’s Hand to guide me,
God’s Way to lie before me,
God’s Shield to shelter me,
God’s Host to secure me,
Against the snares of demons,
Against the seductions of vices,
Against the lusts of nature,
Against everyone who meditates injury to me,
Whether far or near,
Whether few or with many.

I invoke today all these virtues
Against every hostile merciless power
Which may assail my body and my soul,
Against the incantations of false prophets,
Against the black laws of heathenism,
Against the false laws of heresy,
Against the deceits of idolatry,
Against the spells of women, and smiths, and druids,
Against every knowledge that binds the soul of man.

Christ, protect me today
Against every poison, against burning,
Against drowning, against death-wound,
That I may receive abundant reward.

Christ with me, Christ before me,
Christ behind me, Christ within me,
Christ beneath me, Christ above me,
Christ at my right, Christ at my left,
Christ in the fort,
Christ in the chariot seat,
Christ in the poop [deck],
Christ in the heart of everyone who thinks of me,
Christ in the mouth of everyone who speaks to me,
Christ in every eye that sees me,
Christ in every ear that hears me.

I bind to myself today
The strong virtue of an invocation of the Trinity,
I believe the Trinity in the Unity
The Creator of the Universe.

Today, I’m praying for God to use the circumstances of the lives of those who love him to teach us to reach whole cultures for him, in the way of Patrick. Rath Dé ort! (May the grace of God be with you!)

Last weekend was the annual Youth For Christ high school student leadership conference, Excel. In keeping with the event’s theme “Compelled by His love” (2 Corinthians 5:14-15) my daughter was among those invited to share about something each did in response to Christ’s compelling love. You can hear both of the students who spoke in the Sunday morning general session being interviewed by Excel Conference Director Dave Lenehan in the video below.

The event Cathie spoke of is The Pro-Life Day of Silent Solidarity, and further information can be found at www.silentday.org.

Thanks to an email reply from The Coalition for the Homeless, an advocacy organization, I’ve been able to find some official documentation of the existence of the “5-or-0 rule” in a City of New York concept paper.  There are 2 concept papers related to the Bloomberg administration’s plan to aid the city’s 35,000+ chronically homeless individuals. (See the NYC DHS homepage for the daily census of known homeless receiving services.)

• Respite Bed Program Concept Paper [pdf]
• Drop-in Centers Concept Paper [pdf]

The paper describing the reorganization of the DHS Drop-in Center program describes what DHS contracted vendors (coordinators of shelters, essentially) must require of those who would provide shelter, to include that they must be open 5 nights per week.  Neither document provides the rationale for this rule. A phone call to DHS to inquire found a helpful person on the other end who said she didn’t know, but would try to find out and reply to me by email (NYC phones can’t call outside the metropolitan area codes).

The Coalition for the Homeless, in response to the DHS concept papers released last week, yesterday released their analysis of the impact of the plan.  You can read that here.

I share all this with you for your action.  I don’t even live in New York City, but I am outraged by several aspects of this plan.

First, that the government is exerting control over caring for the chronic homeless, and then making it more difficult for them to actually get help.

Second, that the 5-or-0 nights rule appears to mainly impact faith-based shelters.

Third, church, we’ve given the government responsibility and control over how we serve the least of these!

Do you want to be known for closing your doors to the homeless? Really? Because that’s what the people you formerly sheltered will see – “that church doesn’t help us anymore.”  Or do you want to be known for passionately and creatively serving the poor?  Beloved, God commanded us to care for our neighbor, not the government.

With regard to my strong belief that Christians ought not expect the government to handle the mercy and justice aspects of the Church’s mission, I need to vent.  I came across a news item today providing information that just astounds me in it’s abject stupidity.

Churches forced to boot homeless
As temperatures fall and the economy crashes, 22 city churches have been told to stop providing beds for the homeless, advocates for the poor charged Friday.

“We will see hundreds of people who will not have a place to sleep. It’s antithetical to what the mayor talks about,” said Arnold Cohen, president of the Partnership for the Homeless, a nonprofit that serves as the middleman between the city and faith-based shelters.

The city recently began enforcing an often-overlooked rule that requires faith-based shelters to open five days a week, said Cohen who told a score of churches last month they no longer qualify to house the homeless.

The city Department of Homeless Services said these shelters – many that have been open three nights a week for decades – should never have been allowed to operate under terms of a contract with the Partnership.

Help me understand…please… why these volunteer-staffed, faith-based organization sponsored shelters that aren’t open 5 nights per week, but have been open 3 nights per week for years, they have to be closed?  When it’s below freezing outside? When they meet all reasonable heath and safety standards? When homelessness in New York City is climbing at a record rate?

If there is a bona fide reason for this, I’d love to hear it.  I searched for quite a while and couldn’t find documentation of this rule even actually existing.

My real question is, however, NY City Church… what are you going to do about it?  Are you going to let the arbitrary rule keep you from serving your neighbors in need?

Poverty is one of a number of factors contributing to the blight on humanity that is child sex trafficking – human slavery for the most depraved of purposes.  Of course, there are also social, religious, cultural and political factors which contribute to human trafficking. All of them are preventable.

It has been my privilege for a number of years now to know Rob Morris and hear him share the work he is so passionate about. That passion, or should I compassion, lead him to found an organization called Justice for Children International in 2002, now known as love146. Rob and love146 are unfettered in their commitment to preventing the trafficking of  young girls for sex, an “industry” which is estimated to generate billions of dollars every year, by rescuing them and providing aftercare and support to aid these girls in healing and reaching their potential as people, not property.  They fight poverty of the worst kind, exploitation.

Watch the video below to hear Rob explain the work of love146, and visit their website to learn more – love146.org

My friend Maria Fenty was in love with the people of Sudan. More than once she trekked there to encourage and serve people in the ravaged south, loving those whose lives were on the line daily. She told me that she hoped to go live there to serve the women and children struggling to survive, whose faith she found contagious, vibrant and thriving.

It was her nature to serve – her ‘real job’ was as a substance abuse counselor and she loved showing people the light at the end of the tunnel. It was no surprise to any who knew her that she discerned God’s call to serve the church as an ordained deacon, received the necessary training and was ordained just days before she led a team to Sudan in February 2002.

While in Sudan, Deacon Maria contracted malaria unbeknownst to her. She became ill after returning home and died of complications of the disease. It was shattering to face the loss, the cost of mission, the unthinkable loss of a friend to a disease so foreign to our homeland.  (photo at right shows her parents receiving condolences from former Bishop Dan Herzog upon the establishment of the Maria Fenty fund for Sudan)

If she had recovered from malaria and could speak to us today, I am 100% certain she would tell us about how vulnerable the people, especially the children, of Sudan and other poor countries are to malaria, and how infection can be so cheaply prevented today. Because she was the sort of person to look hardship in the face and find hope, she would be passionate about learning from her experience and working toward making sure no one else suffered needlessly.

Please investigate the links below, and do what you can to help solve a problem that needlessly puts so many of the world’s poorest at risk.

Nothing But Nets – http://www.nothingbutnets.net/

Roll Back Malaria – http://www.rollbackmalaria.org/worldmalariaday/

Malaria Consortium – http://www.mobilising4malaria.org/index.php

Gifts may also be made to the Maria Fenty Fund, which makes grants for initiatives in Sudan, by sending donations so marked by mail to the Episcopal Diocese of Albany, 68 S. Swan St., Albany, NY, 12210.

The most difficult cases that come before the grand jury are the ones involving “special victims” – children, the disabled and the elderly. These people are supposed to be given special care, protection and respect, but it is a dark reality that these most vulnerable are often used, abused, and ignored. This is a painful look into the culture’s soul.

The hurts perpetrated against these whom society ought to give special care and respect are so painful to all of us. When the defenseless are left without ordinary champions, without cultural value, it diminishes us all. Once they are hurt, they can not, in fact, be restored by the justice the system metes out. Yes, if all goes well someone will be punished, but the damage to the child, to the elder, to the incapacitated can not be undone – it has already further darkened our cultural soul.

Most of us can live with the peripheral knowledge that “these things happen” and we become disturbed and distressed only when it comes to the forefront of our attention. If we’re honest, we see these stories on the news and we breathe something like “thank God that didn’t happen to my child/aged parent” or, worse, “thank God I could never do something like that.” We forget it as quickly as we can after that.

But you know what? We’re responsible for these people, even when we don’t know them. These are our neighbors, members of our community, and they need us to pay attention to them and offer them the kind of protection being known brings us all.

Knowing and being known are the best deterrent to abuse that ever existed. God Almighty designed it that way, and the Holy Trinity models it for us. It takes a communal, interdependent existence to bring out all of our strengths, and protect us all from our weaknesses. The soul of our culture is blackened by independence, by isolation, by self-centeredness… these are the antithesis of community and the breeding ground of abuses of every kind.

For those who are followers of Jesus Christ our highest calling is to demonstrate His love and self-sacrifice by loving others as we are loved by him – known, completely and called to holiness. There is a passage in Roman 12, from verses 9-21, which explain:

⁹Love must be sincere. Hate what is evil; cling to what is good. ¹⁰Be devoted to one another in brotherly love. Honor one another above yourselves. ¹¹Never be lacking in zeal, but keep your spiritual fervor, serving the Lord. ¹²Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer. ¹³Share with God’s people who are in need. Practice hospitality.

¹⁴Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse. ¹⁵Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn. ¹⁶Live in harmony with one another. Do not be proud, but be willing to associate with people of low position. Do not be conceited.

¹⁷Do not repay anyone evil for evil. Be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everybody. ¹⁸If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone. ¹⁹Do not take revenge, my friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written: “It is mine to avenge; I will repay,” says the Lord. ²⁰On the contrary:
“If your enemy is hungry, feed him;
if he is thirsty, give him something to drink.
In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head.” ²¹Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.

Combined with the teaching in Jesus parables that all are our neighbors, Romans 13:10 concludes “Love does no harm to its neighbor. Therefore love is the fulfillment of the law.”

As I’ve asked the youth I’ve had the honor of walking with in discipleship over the years, what would change in the world if we truly lived this out? The answer? Just about everything. Even culture’s dark soul.

note: this post is in memory of Mrs. Beth Adams.
see the link in the comments for more.

I’ve come, only recently, to recognize a sad dynamic in the church. It is one that I truly believe keeps us from the kind of vibrant, engaged, interconnected community to which we are called as members of the Body of Christ. That dynamic? “I’ll see you Sunday!”

When we say that, or even think it with regard to our brothers and sisters in our own church, we are putting off relationships, we are suspending community. Yes, to be sure, there is often an element of anticipation, even of excitement, in the phrase because we do like to be together. However, in practical terms it becomes a way of saying “our relationship is on hold until Sunday.” And mostly we keep that rubric by having little, if any, contact with most of our fellow congregation members Monday through Saturday, even if we didn’t see them on Sunday.

It took me a long time to recognize this because I’ve spent the vast majority of my time for many years at a church or ministry site interacting with people daily both in and around the church, and in the context of ministry contacts with students, in each case serving them and caring for them. It wasn’t until my life circumstances changed and I wasn’t there daily being intentionally relational, modeling and teaching all the time that I found out it isn’t getting through to the rest of the community.  Most other people aren’t doing this.  I’m not only talking about my present church, but all the churches and ministries of which I’ve been a part vocationally. This has been a big realization for me, and it’s been a long time surfacing.

The people of the congregations and ministries of which I’ve been a part are good, faithful people. They aren’t awful, they don’t want to hurt someone or be hurt. Somehow, though, the idea of community being all of our calling – not just a way the pastors “do” their job – isn’t getting through. The concept that if we don’t see someone on Sunday that it is our responsibility to see if there is a need, not only that proverbial someone ™ – in our minds that usually means the clergy – needs to become the practice.

Of course, we all know different people better than others. Some churches are so small that everyone knows everyone, others so large that there are people who regularly attend the same service for years who may never meet. But, if we each took responsibility for one another, if we each looked out for one another, if we didn’t just wave and say “see you Sunday!”… what could the community of Christ followers look like? (more…)

YMX had the opportunity to do a pre-release review of David Crowder Band‘s newest, Remedy, releasing September 25. Adam wrote the site’s review and I had the opportunity to produce a devotional, Infected by the Remedy, based on the album’s title track for the Monday Exchange, our free resource feature. Click here to read the review. Click here to grab the devotional.

My personal review

DCB defines cutting-edge, pop-rock, musical creativity and challenges paradigms in the worship genre in particular. I thought that before I heard Remedy. After listening? DCB re-defines cutting-edge, pop-rock musical creativity and continually challenges paradigms in the worship genre in particular.  Seriously.

I am an admitted modern worship music junkie.  I listen to it all, I really appreciate a lot of it, I’m entertained by some of it, and then there is that rare collection which truly leads me to adoration of the God who inspires it, is worthy of it, and motivates me to a new place of praise.  Remedy absolutely falls into that last description.

Framed in the context that God is omnipresent, the 10 tracks are thoroughly thoughtful and vigorous in message and style.  From proclaiming God’s glory, discerning His presence, identifying our place in Him, inviting His abiding, and singing His praise, the lyrics move us to the rallying point and give us the charge to go out and change the world.  It is worshipful and missional, exciting and musically interesting, but more importantly it is engaging us to engage.  I like that. A lot.